Anatomy of Keto Sugar Free Pecan Pralines

I think the blend of the natural sweeteners is what makes these pralines taste like traditional sugar-laden pralines. Natural sweeteners sometimes have an off flavor, but I found that combination of golden monkfruit and sukrin didn’t.

Traditional southern pecan pralines are made using a candy thermometer. I thought I would need one, too, and then I’m like, duh! My sweeteners don’t have the same chemical properties of sugar. I was surprised I got a nice thick creamy consistency by essentially just reducing the mixture.

A word of warning, these are REALLY sweet. I can only eat one at a sitting, so if you are worried about overeating and ruining your carb count, I think you’ll be good!

Pecan Pralines: The Perfect Low Carb Christmas Candy

BLC (before low carb) I always made some sort of Christmas candy every year. I’ve really missed my homemade candy during the Holidays.

This year I plan on making pecan pralines as a low carb Christmas candy. I will feel like I’m splurging, but at around 5 carbs a piece, I’ll still be sticking to my keto diet!

Creamy Low Carb Coconut Pie, Yum!

I believe there are two camps of people in the world. Those who like coconut, and those who can’t stand it. I happen to be in the I-couldn’t-live-without-coconut camp. My low carb coconut pie has triple the coconut goodness that will make any coconut lover swoon.

I love to bake, but I’m not always one for spending a bunch of time on an everyday recipe. I think that’s why lately I’ve been turning to icebox pies, like my strawberry cream pie I made a few weeks ago.

This low carb coconut pie is an easy, no bake summer dessert. I wanted a coconut cream pie that was cool and creamy chocked full of coconut. This pie ticks all the right boxes!

How to Make a Gluten Free Crumb Crust

This crust is based on a recipe I saw in an old Kraft magazine that used crushed shortbread cookies, sweetened coconut, and nuts.

The shortbread cookies had to go, but I wasn’t sure what to replace them with. I wanted to keep things simple. I finally decided to settle on using 1/4 cup almond flour in place of the cookies, andorganic unsweetened shredded coconut in place of the sweetened coconut.

For sweetener, I used golden monk fruit because it gives the crust a more golden color and I find it doesn’t have a funky aftertaste either.

Pulse the nuts in a food processor until fine. Add the sweetener, coconut, and almond flour. Blend until you have course crumbs. Add the butter or coconut oil and press into a 9 inch deep dish pie plate.

How to Make a Coconut Cream Pie Using Coconut Milk

Now, don’t go buy a carton coconut milk in the refrigerator section of your grocery store because it won’t work in this recipe. You have to use canned coconut milk that has no other ingredients other than coconut milk and water.

That’s sometimes hard to find, and I’ve found pure coconut cream from Amazon works a lot better anyway because I don’t have to drain off any liquid.

If you do used canned coconut milk, refrigerate for 24 hours. When you’re ready to make your low carb coconut pie, open the can and scoop out the solid cream that’s formed at the top of the can into the mixing bowl. Save the watery part for smoothies or popsicles.

Beat the cream from two cans and powdered Swerve into stiff peaks and follow the recipe as normal.

Easy Low Carb Desserts Don’t Have to Be Complicated

One thing that’s bugged me about baking since I went low carb is the complexity of a lot of the recipes. I just want to make desserts as quick as I used to make gluten and carb laden goodies. That’s why I like this low carb coconut pie recipe. Quick, easy, and minimal ingredients.

If you looking for simple low carb goodies, take a look at my easy low carb desserts page. Our days are filled with work and family obligations, and at the end of the day baking shouldn’t take up our precious family time.

A Low Carb Gluten Free Spice Cookie for Christmas? Yes, Please!

I’ve always had a thing about ginger spice cookies. The ginger flavor just reminds me of my Aunt Dorothy. Christmas at her house meant spice cakes and gingersnaps.

Plus, ginger cookies are so darn homey and Christmas-y. My husband and son don’t like them, but I don’t care, more for me!

So the past few Christmases or so that I’ve been gluten free and low carb, you can imagine how bummed I’ve been that I haven’t been able to eat my traditional ginger snaps. This year I decided it’s going to be different. I WILL eat ginger snaps for the Holidays!

Enter My Low Carb Ginger Cookies Recipe

This is one recipe I had to fiddle with to get it to work out right. At first, I tried making them with a mixture of almond flour and protein powder. The taste was spot on, but I might as well have been eating sawdust. Ugh.

I wasn’t really sure how to make it better, but then I got to thinking about the way I made my GF chocolate chip cookies. They had no eggs at all, and used liquid sweetener and oil to bind it together. I know gingersnaps are usually crunchy, but I was willing to overlook that as long as they tasted like gingersnaps.

When I was looking on Pinterest for a low carb gluten free spice cookie, a traditional gingersnap recipe popped up on my feed. It used brown butter to give the cookies a real rich flavor. It sounded so good, I decided to try it instead of the coconut oil. OMG, browned butter makes these cookies taste AMAZING!

And then, to give it a more authentic flavor, I decided to add a tablespoon of unsulphured molasses. Yeah, I know it’s not a low carb ingredient. But a tablespoon distributed throughout 20 cookies is not bad, and each cookie has a little less than two carbs a piece.

How to Make Low Carb Spice Cookies

The first step in the low carb ginger cookies recipe is browning the butter. Don’t know how to brown butter you say? I was kind of intimidated by this step, but it turns out it’s a whole lot easier than I thought.

How to Brown Butter

First off, you’ll have 100% more success if you use a light colored pan. Browned butter can turn to burnt butter quickly, and you can’t tell the difference unless you’ve got a dark bottomed pan.

Melt one stick of unsalted butter, stirring constantly. It will foam a little, but that’s just the water in the butter cooking off. Continue stirring until it’s an amber color.

Don’t worry about the brown bits at the bottom. That is just cooked milk solids. Some people don’t care for it and separate it before they add it to a recipe. I personally like the flavor, and it lends a darker color to the cookies.

I’ll give a bit of advice here. I’ve tried this with store brand sugar free syrup, and I got cookies with a funky rubbery texture. It might have been just the brands I tried, but I’ve only ever had success with xylitol maple syrup or honey.

Bake at 350 F for 15-20 minutes, or until firm. Let them sit and cool for a few minutes before you move them to a rack to finish cooling. This recipe will make approximately 20 cookies.

Even though they’re not crispy and crunchy like regular gingersnaps, this low carb ginger cookies recipe gives them the same zesty kick and taste. I hope you’ll give them a try for the Holidays, or anytime you get the ginger spice craving.

Hot Summers Call for Cool Desserts

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been pretty impossible to live with if I get hot. My parents didn’t even bother to get an air conditioner until I came along. And to keep the house (and my bratty self) cool in the summer, my mother had my dad build an outdoor kitchen so she could cook and keep the heat outside.

Fast forward 30 years.

When it’s hot and humid here in Florida, the last thing I want to do is cook. The bad thing is, I still want dessert. AND I want a dessert that will help me cool off.

I don’t exactly want an outdoor kitchen like my mother, but I do want recipes that are easy and going to keep me cool. That involves using the oven as little as possible. That’s why I love this easy low carb strawberry pie.

Anatomy of a Low Carb Strawberry Pie

I was never a pie baking person because I never could get the crust to come out right. Icebox pies though were another story. I loved being able to throw it together, refrigerate, and enjoy a nice cool slice of pie in the summer.

I wondered if I could make an icebox low carb berry pie work. My old recipe had all of three ingredients. Jello, Cool Whip, and strawberries. Easy breezy!

I kept the strawberry jello, albeit I used sugar free.

Cool Whip is great and all, but I don’t want fake food. Who wants basically eat oil and corn syrup? Especially when the real stuff tastes sooo much better! I decided to use heavy whipping cream in place of the Cool Whip.

I’m so glad that strawberries are relatively low carb. They’re my favorite fruit, and I think I’d die if I couldn’t have any. A cup of chopped strawberries has roughly 10-12 carbs. That’s not bad when you break the pie up into servings.

How I Made a Low Carb “Graham Cracker” Crust

Time saving convenience foods like a pre-made graham cracker crusts are a thing of the past when you’re low carb and gluten free. But making a low carb nut crust takes only minutes, and you can have it done and ready to go in less time than it take you to go to the store and buy one.

You can find recipes for low carb crusts all over the internet. They’re quick and easy to make. All you need are pecans, walnuts, or whatever your nut of choice is. But I add something a little different to give it a darker flavor to kind of mimic the “graham cracker” look and taste.

I add Golden Lakanto monkfruit sweetenerto my crust. This is a new sweetener to me. I bought it because I read it tastes like brown sugar. I’ve only used it in my low carb “graham cracker” crust, and it does give it a darker flavor just like brown sugar would.

First, the Low Carb, Gluten Free “Graham Cracker” Crust Recipe

Mix 4 tbsp melted butter to nut mixture and combine well. Press the dough to the bottom and sides of an 9 inch pie plate. Bake at 350 F for 12-15 minutes, or until golden and set. Remember to let it cool completely before you add your pie filling!

Now Let’s Make a Low Carb Strawberry Pie!

Chop enough strawberries to make 1 cup. (About a half a pound) Set aside.

Add enough ice cubes to 1/2 cup of water to make 1 cup.

Dissolve a box of sugar free strawberry jello in 2/3 cup boiling water. When there’s no granules left, pour in the ice water. Stir until the ice cubes completely melt and set aside to thicken.

Beat 2 cups whipping cream on high until extremely stiff. It should be able to stick to your spoon when you hold it sideways.

Easy Low Carb Flourless Brownies that My Family will Actually Eat

My family has adjusted to me having to be gluten free pretty well. Low carb is another story. It’s a good thing I have pretty decent willpower, because I’d have a revolt on my hands if I threw all the breads and sweets out of the house.

Over the summer, I had to work the evening shift. Luckily my husband is an awesome country cook. A little too awesome. He knows how to keep everything gluten free, but low carbing is completely foreign to him and I probably gained 20 pounds over the summer. When I asked him to keep the carbs down a bit, I got this:

“What’s a carb?”

Ugh, you see my struggle.

But at his last checkup, his doctor was concerned about his sugar levels. So guess who else is low carbing it in the house?

I love irony.

If low carb at my house was gonna fly, I had to come up with some impressive desserts to keep my DH’s hands off of the Little Debbies. And that’s how my low carb flourless brownies were born. More importantly gooey low carb brownies he would actually eat.

How I Make my Easy Low Carb Flourless Brownies

It can be difficult to make sugar free, gluten free brownies that taste like a traditional brownie. To try to offset this, I used three different sweeteners to my low carb brownies recipe.

I hate the cooling sensation that erythritol can have if you use a large amount. My favorite erythritol mixture is Steviva It has more stevia than erythritol, so it doesn’t have as much of a cooling aftertaste. To give it a more of a sugar-like sweetness, I also used stevia glycerite and xylitol honey

If you’ve never heard of xylitol, you really ought to give it a try. It has a chemical sounding name, but it’s actually extracted from birch trees, so it’s pretty natural. The xylitol honey adds to the sweetness and really gives the brownies a gooey texture.

I use these for making low carb desserts, but I even use them as a low carb snack when I’m craving something sweet.

They’re quite large, so I use a pair of scissors to cut them up into mini marshmallow size pieces to make my gooey low carb brownies even gooier.

Sprinkle the top of your brownies with your marshmallows and sugar free chocolate chips.

My family love these, and they go quickly around here. The only problem I have now is I have to share my low carb goodies with my family. But that’s okay. With these, I just might be able to throw out the processed sweets without a mutiny.

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Amazon Disclosure

Down Home Gluten Free is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.